well , i am not too sure about that . 
i think it is going to be kind of tough to go home and explain how you are voting against an additional $ 100 million for title i , and i think you are going to have a tough time explaining to parents of children that have special needs that you voted against an additional $ 100 million for the programs for special needs kids . 
i think you are going to have a tough time explaining how you voted against adding $ 250 million in medical research at nih to deal with the multitude of challenges , and to the communities that are earmarked for community health centers , to help people without a doctor , without medical care . 
i am not sure how you explain to them they are going to have a merry christmas when they are not getting their community health centers and the community services block grants . 
i want to say to my colleagues , this is a good bill . 
i recognize we had limited resources . 
there are a lot of things that were unusual this year with katrina and with other challenges , and what we have tried to do is do the best we can with what was available ; and i think we have done some pretty positive things . 
i want to say to my colleagues on our side of the aisle , we are not getting any help from our friends on the minority side , so i would hope that we will have strong , strong support on our side to demonstrate that we can govern , that we can pass a very responsible bill with less money than the past because we have managed what we had in a more effective way . 
but also i say to my colleagues that we want to say to the public that we do care about education , that we do care about the teachers , that we do care about the students who will benefit from that extra $ 100 million in title i. we want to say to the families of special needs children , we do care about your problem , and we want to support that extra $ 100 million that is in this bill . 
and we want to say to people who are confronted with the whole myriad of challenging medical problems , such as juvenile diabetes , that we want to help and we want to support an additional $ 250 million for nih . 
we want to say to those that need community health centers , where they do not have access to medical care , we want to help you with $ 66 million additional , and with liheap , with the northeast in particular , and with the community services block grants . 
this is a bill that is caring about people . 
i would suggest to my colleagues on this side that we need to demonstrate with a very strong vote that even though our friends on the other side think it is not enough that it is going to have problems involving reconciliation ; but this is not a ways and means bill , this is not a budget bill , this is the people 's bill with people 's programs . 
it is not the reconciliation bill . 
that is another topic , and people will have their opportunity to vote on that . 
but i simply want to say that given the resources that we have , given the times that we are confronted with , that we have done a very responsible job , even to the point that members have sacrificed their earmarks . 
they have sacrificed $ 1 billion worth of earmarks in order to do the things that i outlined before , to do more education , to do more health research , to do more community health centers . 
so this is something that all of us are taking part in trying to serve the needs of the american people as effectively as possible . 
this is a lot of money , $ 142.5 billion , and this literally is the people 's bill . 
i want to point out to my friends on the other side that when the republicans became the majority party , this bill was $ 69 billion . 
today , it is $ 142 billion , more than double what it was in 1994 . 
that is pretty substantial dedication to education , to health research , to a whole host of things . 
i would point out in the last 10 years we have increased title i aid to disadvantaged students by 91 percent . 
we have increased special education by 380 percent . 
that is a dramatic increase . 
i think it is great that we , and i want to say historically that has had strong bipartisan support , that we care about people who have needs . 
i was once an elementary principal in a public school , and we did not have any special education program . 
that was the problem of the families . 
today , we have billions of dollars spent on these programs . 
that is a credit to america , that people do care about each other ; and it is demonstrated by the support we have for idea , with an increase of 380 percent . 
that has been bipartisan . 
we have tripled the federal funding for reading programs . 
i think we are more and more aware that learning to read early in your education experience is vitally important . 
today , we are faced within the united states with a dropout rate of over 30 percent . 
that is a terrible waste of human talent . 
one of the things that causes that , i think , is inadequate reading programs early on . 
we are trying to address that problem . 
we have addressed that problem . 
we are also recognizing in this bill that the key to a good public education system is a good teacher , a good principal , a good superintendent , caring people . 
so we put in this bill some additional money to recruit and retrain quality public school teachers and principals . 
parents who have worked with principals in the school system know how important that is . 
pell grants , we have gone up 64 percent in the last 10 years . 
again , we want to help those students who want to get an education who have limited economic resources to get an opportunity to participate in the american dream . 
we have done this with america 's historically black colleges . 
we have increased their funding 182 percent . 
that is a dramatic commitment on the part of the federal government . 
all in all , i think we as a congress can take some pride . 
this is not the back of the bus when you spend $ 142 billion . 
anything but . 
this is a front-row seat . 
and we have tried to make sure that every american , every american , could be in that front-row seat on the education bus , on the health research bus , on the labor department programs for job retraining bus . 
i think this is a bill we can take pride in . 
my colleagues on my side , since we can not get any help from our friends on the minority side for whatever reason , i have not quite figured that out , but i think our members need to strongly support this bill and continue the pride we can take in our accomplishments since we became a majority , since 1994 , as i have outlined , and particularly in the last 10 years . 
this is a bill that is responsible , it is a bill that reflects good management of resources , it is a bill that we should all support strongly . 
i hope my colleagues on the majority side will come in and vote in a positive way to increase education , to increase medical research , to increase a whole host of things that will serve our people throughout this land effectively . 
